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A little counterprogramming to your steady diet of predictions that the Democrats will remain in control of the House from the Washington Examiner:

Half of Americans believe that Republicans will maintain control of the House in the midterm elections Tuesday, according to Gallup’s final poll. The result of that question has lined up with the actual election outcome every time Gallup has asked it since 1946.

Fifty percent of Americans believe Republicans will stay in power in the House, while 44 percent believe Democrats will take control.

What does this say? It says Republicans are energized and optimistic. Democrats talk a good game and then a lot of their constituencies don’t bother to vote. And some Republicans and independents are ashamed to tell pollsters they’re going with Trump.

My prediction: The Republicans maintain control of the House. I just don’t think that with the economy so good and with President Trump passionately addressing issues conservatives care about, that voters are going to give the House to Democrats and hamstring the White House with investigations and impeachment.

British oddsmakers are putting the chances of Republicans keeping the House at about 30 percent. That’s not even odds, but it’s a lot better than the supposed experts in the United States are giving them. Where people are putting their money down, the odds look better for the GOP.

I think there is an understanding that there is something fundamentally immoral and wrong about a nation in which we have three people that own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people.

Notice he says that there is something “immoral and wrong” about the nation, not the situation he is describing. Because that’s how he feels.

This video was made by the Republican Party, and with good reason. The more the left lets its true feelings show, the better Republicans are going to do in 2018.

Glad to see at least one of the correspondents alluded to the fact that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of them will have to find plant far more of the money-growing trees that they obviously believe in.

President Donald Trump’s campaign has stockpiled $33 million in his campaign account two-and-a-half years before the next presidential election, new disclosures show . . .

Trump’s campaign operation raised $18 million between April and the end of June overall, a slight decrease from the $20 million it had raised during the first three months of the year. In addition to Trump’s campaign, the president established two joint fundraising committees that raise funds that are distributed among both the campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Trump was the first president in history to file for reelection shortly after entering the White House and to create a campaign account. He’d amassed tens of millions of dollars before the midterm elections even moved into full swing, an unprecedented act for any president. The $33 million that Trump had in his bank account at the end of June put him leagues ahead of any potential presidential challengers.

All told, Trump has raised almost $90 million for his campaign and the two joint fundraising committees since he launched his reelection bid. Combined, the three committees had $53 million cash on hand at the end of June.

Trump has gained from simply being honest about things politically.

Previous presidents have pretended for a couple of years that they didn’t know if they were going to run for reelection and that their actions weren’t informed in part by politics. This even though every president since Calvin Coolidge has either sought reelection if they could or decided not to only when it became clear they couldn’t win.

So now Trump has $33 million in the bank and surely won’t be using his own money on the campaign.

The victory of extreme leftist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York over Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat and someone who many thought would replace Nancy Pelosi, is a huge win for Republicans and President Trump.

Just a thought – how come the press never describes someone like Ocasio-Cortez – who supports universal health care, guaranteed employment, and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency – as “extreme” or “radical”? Or even “left-wing.” Only conservatives are “extreme” or have a “wing” attached to them. Sorry, just thinking out loud.

Anyway, my point is, even if the press believes socialists are perfectly mainstream, much of the rest of the country still does not, and plenty – particularly conservatives – will turn out in force to support Republicans. People like Ocasio-Cortez and Maxine Waters – Republicans should hope to see more of her if her message wasn’t so dangerous – are confirming that the Democratic Party belongs to Bernie Sanders, whose policies are insane.

Professional Republicans are well aware of this. The RNC Tuesday released this video, a quite effective one, seems to me:

Of course, Trump gets this too.

Congratulations to Maxine Waters, whose crazy rants have made her, together with Nancy Pelosi, the unhinged FACE of the Democrat Party. Together, they will Make America Weak Again! But have no fear, America is now stronger than ever before, and I’m not going anywhere!

It wasn’t the only victory for liberals in competitive primaries on Tuesday.

Former NAACP President Ben Jealous won the Democratic nomination for Maryland governor, campaigning over the final weekend with Sen. Bernie Sanders, even as Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker had most of the state party in his corner.

Elsewhere in New York, a Syracuse University professor, Dana Balter, beat a more moderate opponent backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Juanita Perez Williams in a battleground House district. Rep. Jared Polis won the Democratic nomination for governor in Colorado, and Joe Neguse, a preferred candidate among liberals, won the nomination to replace Polis in the House.

While Crowley was the only incumbent to fall, two of his New York City colleagues — Reps. Yvette Clarke and Carolyn Maloney — were held under 60 percent against 30-something candidates who said the progressive moment inspired their under-the-radar campaigns.

These people are going to make Nancy Pelosi look completely reasonable and moderate. They are also going to flatten out the Blue Wave everyone was expecting this year.

The bad news is that the opposition party is now one step from communist.

It wasn’t a good day Tuesday night for Republicans who failed to associate themselves with President Trump.

Trump critic Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina learned that the hard way when he lost his primary to pro-Trump Katie Arrington.

The president, finally able to turn his attention to politics after the Singapore summit, weighed in with a last minute tweet before the polls closed that may well have spelled Sanford’s doom.

Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!

My political representatives didn’t want me to get involved in the Mark Sanford primary thinking that Sanford would easily win – but with a few hours left I felt that Katie was such a good candidate, and Sanford was so bad, I had to give it a shot. Congrats to Katie Arrington!

As James Antle notes in the Washington Examiner, Sanford follows in the footsteps of other Republicans who crossed Trump, like Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who didn’t even bother trying to win their primaries.

Recent Republican primaries have demonstrated Trump’s power over the party. Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Virginia over the strenuous objections of many in the party — his less prominent main challenger did come within less than 2 points of the upset — in no small part because he embraced Trump . . .

Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., was forced into a runoff by a recent former Democratic congressman who voted for Barack Obama for president and Nancy Pelosi for speaker. Why? Because Roby was deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.

The most prominent example was when Trump exhorted West Virginia Republicans to remember Alabama and nominate someone other than Don Blankenship, who had recently done time over a deadly mining accident and was producing racist television commercials, to run against vulnerable Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

In these cases, Trump is aligned with leadership on the outcome of the primary. The voters simply won’t listen to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., or any other leader besides Trump.

The bolding is mine. Antle goes on to say Trump’s domination of the party “won’t necessarily last forever.”

That’s certainly true. At the very least, some kind of coherent pro-Trump faction with a guiding ideology must be created to ensure what Trump stands for outlasts Trump. Otherwise, once he’s gone, the Mitch McConnells, the Chamber of Commerces, and the Bushes of the world – all the “adults” – will simply clean the house up from what they think is a one-night keg party thrown by the “children” and make everything just as it was.

Well look at this. A little community organizing by Republicans. The GOP would do well to take a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook since Barack Obama WON THE PRESIDENCY TWICE.

From an article in Politico, which in this case does a nice job of laying out a news story about something Republican are doing without the usual caveats about how evil the whole thing is:

Republicans have amassed a sprawling shadow field organization to defend the House this fall, spending tens of millions of dollars in an unprecedented effort to protect dozens of battleground districts that will determine control of the chamber.

The initiative by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), now includes 34 offices running mini-campaigns for vulnerable Republicans throughout the country. It has built its own in-house research and data teams and recruited 4,000 student volunteers, who have knocked on more than 10 million doors since February 2017.

CLF’s new, more targeted structure also overshadows that of its Democratic rival, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC, which has no field locations.

CLF’s midterm strategy, which emphasizes long-term voter engagement, is not normal for a super PAC. Typically, lawmakers’ campaigns and the National Republican Congressional Committee deal with field work and get-out-the-vote efforts — then PACs like CLF swoop in to fill in the blanks with what Bliss often refers to as “shitty TV ads.”

But Ryan’s political allies decided last year that that model wasn’t working — and that CLF, with its seemingly endless resources, was a “sleeping giant,” as they called it.

GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson has provided tens of millions of dollars for the effort.

Activists have been knocking on doors and ringing phones since the beginning of last year, heading back to the same people repeatedly to lock up their vote for local House candidates. The idea stems from a simple concept that every child knows about his parents: Keep asking, and eventually you may get to “yes.”

Democrats have little idea of what to do about running the country, other than hating on Trump. Maybe they think Robert Mueller’s investigation will somehow erase the wage gap or get Kim Jong-Un to stop his nuclear weapons program.

Anyway, just being against something seems to be having political consequences, especially when the person you’re against just lowered everyone’s taxes.

House Democrats are heading into the throes of the election haunted by many of the same problems that dogged them in 2016: a Trump-dominated news cycle, a message that’s struggling to break through and sharp divisions within the party about how to fix it.

Now many Democrats say they’re watching nervously as polls start to trend in Republicans’ favor — and worry they’re witnessing the beginning of a slow-motion train wreck that they have no idea how to stop.

There are still widespread disagreements within the diverse 193-member caucus about what campaign message Democrats should rally around in the final months before the midterms and even who should be the party’s chief messenger.

Some Democrats worry a rerun of the Republican playbook employed in the past several cycles — painting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the GOP’s central villain — will again be successful in denying them the House majority.

Other members say the caucus’ main problems are internal. Democrats on the far ends of the party’s ideological spectrum continue to battle over what their focus should be in the election — and how much of it should center on President Donald Trump.

Under threat of an arduous primary challenge backed by Steve Bannon, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., announced Tuesday he will not seek reelection.

Flake’s decision to retire follows that of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who stood down as polls showed him below 50 percent with Republican voters in his state. Bannon was recruiting a primary challenger to run against Corker.

The former chief Trump White House strategist now has helped pressure two establishment Republican senators to step aside and make room for candidates more favorable to Trump. Corker and Flake are perhaps Trump’s harshest critics among Republicans in the Senate.

Flake, like Corker, had been struggling in the polls. According to the Arizona Republic, Flake acknowledged that political concerns were driving his decision:

He told The Arizona Republic ahead of his announcement that he has become convinced “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”

Flake said he has not “soured on the Senate” and loves the institution, but that as a traditional, libertarian-leaning conservative Republican he is out of step with today’s Trump-dominated GOP.

“This spell will pass, but not by next year,” Flake said.

During an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Flake assailed Trump. “I rise today to say, ‘enough.’ We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal.”

Flake’s decision comes just one week after Bannon hosted a fundraiser for Flake challenger Kelli Ward.

Politics is not really about winning or losing. Politics is about the number of votes you get. And if you get enough votes, you happen to win. And that means something. But if you get many more votes than you were expected to get and you still lose, it is also very meaningful. Governing is… Continue Reading

Democrats are always so much better at spinning their nonsense than Republicans are. They whine, attack, and rally the troops every time there’s a big battle to be fought, while Republicans think somehow people will come around to their point of view. And Democrats do it in an organized fashion guided by a well thought… Continue Reading

Well, they’re moving sharply to the left, after already . . . moving sharply to the left, so that’s bad news for them. From the Washington Examiner: Democrats may be their own worst enemy when it comes to trying to rebuild their party into a more inclusive entity that can take back Congress and the… Continue Reading

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Trump Schedule

9:00 am || Participates in a Thanksgiving teleconference with members of the military; Mar-a-Lago; Palm Beach, Florida

All times Eastern

Quote of the Day

"And by the way, I'm going to ask my next question while standing on my head, and then sing Frank Sinatra songs during the answer. It's my right."

– Jim Acosta

A note from my power attorneys: This is not an actual quote.

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